My melancholy deepened the next time I saw her. She was with another man, tall and lean, and when she saw me, she moved closer to him — and held his hand. To complicate things further, I knew the son of a bitch — a con-artist, sneak thief, and small-time drug dealer. A chronic scammer, he may well have had his eye on her worldly goods. What was I to do? Tell her I caught him stealing? True enough, but would she think it a jealous lie? The more I dwelled on her rejection, the less I cared about her and her worldly goods.
But forgetting her entirely was a slow process. I tried the standard cure — other women, compensatory dating — and managed to alienate one girlfriend-elect after another. I would forget their name, or call them by the wrong name — Alice Mary, for instance — and did that ever siphon away their interest. Eventually, I tired of the hunt and retreated to my haven of books and the pleasures of music and an occasional snifter of red wine.
And from time to time, I would chat with my bohemian neighbors. They favored simple work, as I did, and spent the rest of their time writing poetry and socializing with other poets and writers and artists. I recall one conversation with Agatha, the lady of the bohemian household.
“Why are women attracted to criminals?” I asked, as we stood on the porch.
Agatha was big and jolly in her flowing, flowery dress. “I guess they seem super-masculine — mesomorphic and all that.”
“Take identical male quintuplets, each with a different personality. The sociopath will have all the girls.”
She saw my exaggerating for what it was. “Now wait — whom are we talking about here? You’ve been jilted, right?”
“Uh — right.”
“And she threw you over for one of the local hoodlums.”
“Uh — yeah.”
Agatha thought for a moment. She had a poet’s insight, and she knew the local territory. “What — uh, were her politics?”
“Socialist.”
“How far did she lean?”
“Not as far as her sister — Lorelei.”
“I know Lorelei. She leans very far.”
“I begin to see your point.”
“People like that view criminals as victims — as the oppressed fighting back. Lorelei considers them fellow revolutionaries. She hangs around with a bunch of them.”
“And my love interest felt a similar sympathy.”
“Yes — and like any criminal, this guy knew how to appeal to that sympathy.”
“He fed her a line, and she toppled.”
“Exactly.”
“And being tall like a Texas cowboy didn’t hurt.”
“No — it was a spur to her emotions.” Agatha shook with her uninhibited laugh.
“Ah, well — live and learn. How’s your chapbook coming?”
“All done and at the publishers. You working tonight?”
“Yes, and off I go.” And off I went.
Some months later — on a Saturday in March 1985 — I was running in a ten-kilometer road race. As I reached the final quarter mile, struggling to beat my forty-five-minute personal best, a little green Honda nearly hit the road guards at an intersection and passed not five yards in front of me. Crossing the raceway, it confounded several runners and then flew down the road on the other side. It was Alice Mary’s car, but driven by that tall sociopath—that scammer. Was he showing off? Had he stolen the car, or merely borrowed it?
Two years went by, and I was working at the dry-cleaning counter when Alice Mary came in. She smiled and said how happy she was to see me, and I got her cleaning from the rack, collected for it, and carried it to her car — a Toyota Tercel.
“What happened to your little Honda?” I asked, as we walked.
“It vanished,” she said forlornly.
Yes, things had a way of vanishing when that scammer was around. I couldn’t bear to tell her she had been so thoroughly taken in. “What have you been doing?”
When I asked this, she became her old effervescent self. She explained that she had given up philosophy. She was tired of the dubious and the nebulous. She was working toward her MBA and had just completed a course in calculus — it was “so logical.” At the moment she was writing a paper on the travel industry and on her way to the corporate headquarters of Stop-and-Sleep Motels “to get their input.” I noticed she wore a trim navy blue jacket and skirt, with running shoes over her nylon stockings. The anticlimactic sneakers had become the corporate symbol of Women Triumphant.
Ten years flew by, before I saw Alice Mary again. It was on a Saturday, the day after payday, and I was walking to the bookstore. She drove up close to me in a car three times the size of her little Honda Civic. She waved and smiled, and I would have enjoyed speaking to her. But a horn sounded behind her, and she hurried away to make the green light. Fading into traffic, she and her car became just another float in an endless parade.
About Robert Watts Lamon
